03-19-2011, 09:50 PM
The idea, I think, is that as an adverb it's akin to "normally" while it's a noun in the sense of "the normal case."
I wouldn't sweat it. The usage is so close to being the same that I've never even thought of it as noun versus adverb. I think sometimes it doesn't help to think like that w.r.t. Japanese anyway. For example, the "desiderative" form of a verb behaves exactly like an adjective in Japanese. The negative plain behaves similar to an adjective, too. Things that are pretty cut and dry in English (although they're not as clear cut as you learn in elementary school anyway) are not so clear in Japanese. This is because there really is no agreed-upon classification that spans all languages. It's a language-by-language issue. Some of the Japanese words we call "adjectives" in English are not called 形容詞 in Japanese. One of the natives has posted about this before.*
Back to your original question, I think it's nominally a noun (har har har) in the sense that "itsu" is a noun, and when you tag on "ka/mo/demo" it remains a noun but changes meaning to "sometime/always/anytime/never" depending on structure and context.
*Examples:
早い is an adjective
早く is considered an adjective in Japanese, but "quickly" (it's translation) is not
静か is an adjectival noun in Japanese, but called 形容動詞 (adjective-verb) in Japanese, is called an adjective in English ("quiet"), but thought of as a noun in Japanese more so than an adjective.
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